Research: Resilience to DisruptionHow might L&T at VUW respond to disaster? |
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In this study, Jacqueline worked with members of the academic resilience steering committee to explore academics’ perceptions of how learning and teaching might respond to a long term disruption (i.e., an earthquake or pandemic). We used a mixed method approach, predominantly semi-structured interviews with academics from a range of teaching experiences within the Faculties of Science, Engineering, Architecture and Design. Benefits, barriers and incentives to building resilience at the individual-, school- and institutional-level were identified and are presented here. Overall, we found that to build resilience, staff should improve communication, leadership, collaboration, planning, digital capabilities, and foster student and university-wide community. Resources are included for staff who want to evaluate and start building their resilience to disruption.
Research Team
Jacqueline Dohaney (Science in Society), Mairead de Roiste (SGEES), Rhian Salmon(Science in Society), Kathryn Sutherland (Centre for Academic Development)
Context
New Zealand’s unique geological and geographical setting puts us at high risk from long-term disruptions (e.g., earthquakes) with the most recent example being the Canterbury earthquakes. Following a local earthquake, many staff at VUW became concerned that we were not prepared for an event of a similar magnitude, particularly with the continuity of learning and teaching (L&T). In response, an initiative was proposed by Mike Wilson and spearheaded by Rhian Salmon to improve the preparedness of academics in the event of a major disruption. They saw this as an opportunity to use flexible pedagogies and new technologies to build capacity and resilience, aligning with the Digital Futures strategy.
In 2012, a steering committee within SEAD was formed and included representatives from across the Faculties as well as L&T support services (e.g., academic development, library, educational technology). The committee has explored many relevant topics such as: a) online and flexible pedagogies, b) accessibility to learning during disaster, c) alternatives to paper-based assessments, d) increased connectivity between students and staff, e) educational materials capture, and f) the use of learning management systems to facilitate course delivery. An education researcher was hired (firstly, Tim Archie, and later Jacqueline Dohaney) to coordinate these efforts and helped to develop practices in engaging academics on building resilient teaching practices. Tim explored the practical elements of preparedness including building a resilience checklist for individuals and specific courses (see Resources). Jacqueline came on board in 2016, and was interested in how resilience-building could be adopted in a long term, sustainable way, which is the subject of the work presented here.
Research Aims
We aimed to uncover academics’ perceptions of resilience to disruption, more specifically the benefits, barriers, challenges, and incentives to improving resilience. Additionally, we aimed to identify practical strategies and dual-benefits of resilience-building and their relationships to existing L&T at VUW (e.g., digital and flexible learning strategies). This allows us to build a long term strategy which can be used to reduce our vulnerabilities in the event of a disaster.
Methods
We used a mixed methods approach consisting of interviews and focus groups conducted with participants from the academic resilience steering committee (n=10) and additional academics from across SEAD (n=8; i.e., physical sciences, engineering, architecture and design). We also asked the participants to write notes during the interviews (to triangulate the verbal data) and asked them to complete a short questionnaire which described their teaching experience, background and demographic information. This study took on an exploratory, yet systematic, investigation of resilience to disruption, employing a complex systems approach to investigate the benefits, barriers, and incentives within the broader institutional context. We used a conventional approach to content analysis (described in more detail by Miles and Huberman, Section VII., 1984) to analyse the interviews and participant notes. Responses were counted for frequency (i.e., unique interviewee mentions) to help us determine if some of the themes are representative, and to help support generalisability of the data. However, the aim was comprehensiveness, which values richness and variety over frequency (Morse 1995). Representative quotes are provided in each of the sections: Benefits, Barriers, and Incentives. For a deeper look at our sampling procedure and data analysis, please see the full publication: Dohaney et al (in prep).
Ethical approval for this research was granted by the human ethics committee of Victoria University of Wellington (#22950, ‘Perceptions of Academic Resilience: Experiences from the Academic Resilience Steering Group and Resilience Pilot Studies’).
What do we mean by resilience?
Resilience is a well-known concept but is used differently across the disciplines. In psychology, it is how individuals respond to a psychologically disruptive event (e.g., Bonanno et al. 2010). In education, it is how an individual is able to learn through adversity (e.g., Downey 2008). In the disaster risk reduction realm, it is how individuals and communities maintain or return to ‘normal functions’ after a crisis (e.g., McManus et al 2007). In this work, we define resilience as the ability of academics to utilise core strategies that enable them to continue L&T during a long-term disruption, such as a disaster (known here as: resilience to disruption).
Resilient Academics
In order to communicate about resilience with others, we asked the steering committee (through focus groups) to define a resilient academic. The group described resilient academics to have a series of specific attributes, skills and knowledge:
- Resilient academics are flexible, adaptable, emotionally resilient, collaborative, empathetic, and open-minded individuals (i.e., resilience attributes).
- They respond quickly during crisis, are digitally literate, organised, prepared andcreative thinkers (i.e., resilience skills).
- Resilient academics also have a sound awareness of their courses, student centred-approaches, L&T options during disruptions, emergency protocols, and the wider institutional system (as a whole) (i.e., resilience knowledge).
Representative Quote
“It's never going to go to plan, and having an ability to adapt as certain events occur means that you're going to be in the best position to respond to physical limitations, students' unexpected limitations, breakdown in certain technologies, utilities, availability, and those kind of things. So I don't think you can ever have a script that says after the earthquake these are the 15 different things we're going to do that's all just going to work smoothly, because every disaster's different. So being able to adapt on the fly and be flexible around that... Also, the response is going to be somewhat technical, because you're going to be in a situation where you're going to be setting up rooms in places that are non-traditional spaces, you're going to require a lot -- and it's going to be easier to be able to bring along an electronic solution and contact the students and interact with the students in that sort of way, so technical skills are going to be really important.”
Resilient Institutions
We also asked the steering committee to define the qualities of an institution which is resilient to disruption. A synthesis of their responses indicated that resilient tertiary institutions have:
- Effective communication channels (before, during, and after emergencies)
- A coherent crisis communication strategy, which includes a message of perseverance
- An established, coherent, L&T disruption plan which works across all levels of the institution
- Strong resilience leadership
- Existing flexible, blended and digital learning strategies
- Existing staff support for resilience initiatives and digital literacy
- Effective and easy-to-use digital infrastructure
- A strong sense of community among students and staff
- Reward academic professional development which promotes resilience qualities
Representative Quotes
“ Communication and respect, leadership communication, messaging, using communication channels that are available and used… Coupled with clear, strong, wise, consistent messaging, then communication is a calming influence. But if it's just lots of random communication from lots of people saying different things would not be helpful. ”
“ In a crisis response, the institution needs to have a clear set of priorities; they need to know what they're going to do, they need to have a plan and they need to have the ability to carry it out. If they don't have a plan or if they don't have the ability to carry it out, then the institution is setting itself up for major disaster. ”
“ If you have a university that recognises and gives leadership positions to those people who are resilient, then you're going to bounce back faster than if you have people paralysed who don't quite know what to do that are in positions of authority and power... If all the individual units are working as individual islands then there will be dependencies which people never realise, until it's too late. There will be opportunities for collaboration which people will not realise at the time because they'll be too stressed dealing with the situation… It also means that individuals can plan for what they need to do in the event of a disaster knowing what is going to happen elsewhere in the University. ”
The benefits of being resilient
The academics reported 61 unique benefits to improved resilience before, during and after a disruptive event (See Table 1 below). Five major benefit categories emerged from their responses and are presented in the order of most frequently mentioned: benefits to academics’ competence, to their emotional state, to L&T, to the universityas whole, and lastly to students.
Of all of the individual codes mentioned by participants, there were key points that were most frequently mentioned. Having improved resilience to disruption...
- Allows academics to feel in control and emotionally prepared for a crisis.
- Helps them to know what to expect (before a crisis) and what to consider during a crisis.
- Allows them to focus on learning outcomes during the crisis, rather than teaching logistics and administration.
- Allows them to be more organised, simplify their everyday L&T, and work on other things aside from teaching.
- Allows them to better support their colleagues, students, and families during a crisis.
- Can easily pass their course onto someone else in the event of an illness.
- Encourages academics to try new L&T strategies.
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Table 1. A list of 61 proposed benefits to academics, universities and students before (left column), during (middle column) and after (right column) disruption. Key benefit categories (shown in blue) and codes are shown here in descending order of unique mentions (i.e., numbers shown in brackets after each code) by participants.
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BEFORE a crisis, …Vertical Divider
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DURING a crisis, …Vertical Divider
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AFTER a crisis, … |
Academics will ... (competence (18/18))
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Representative Quotes
* ''Getting organised is going to be beneficial in lots of different ways. You know, you’re going to come back to it a year later when you think 'Oh where was that thing?' 'What did I do?' and 'Where did I put that?', 'How was my computer filing system structured?' Having that level of organisation is just going to help you anyway in your daily work.''
** 'You know what to do in a crisis. You know what things you can let go of and what things you can't. I think that's the key thing. And you also know which bits of learning are then at risk, now that there's no building to go to and what bits are not, because you can do it another way.''
Academics will feel ... (emotional state (16/18))
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Representative Quotes
* ''It's about emotional stability, as well, isn't it? More able to support students, colleagues, family and friends through crisis as well. If you are prepared, then you're actually not going to have a breakdown as well... The ideal would be that if there was a crisis, the academics would be calm and actually able to think about the issues that are going on with their own families and houses without also thinking oh my office, and my teaching and you know''
Learning and Teaching (L&T) will... (15/18)
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Representative Quotes
* ''One of benefits could be it could open the door to encouraging you to look at alternative teaching methods or simplify the way that you run things, potentially…''
** ''And then someone who is resilient and someone who can respond to a range of different situations and having a resilient course, or having a resilient way of doing things enables you to cope if you get sick and how are you going to keep the course running and meet the objectives of that?''
*** ''{It} supports academics in accepting and adopting new strategies and tools (digital in particular) that are beneficial in and beyond potential crisis''
The institution will ... (13/18)
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Representative Quotes
* “… It could be quite an exciting challenge … apart from the horror of dealing with the {event}, but it could be in a situation where everything feels out of control, it could be a really empowering thing to do to be able to take charge and start to put the pieces back together.''
** ''And clearly operationally, so working life can continue, not exactly as normal but it can proceed in some form or other. In other words, it's not necessarily a total loss of six weeks or six months.''
Students will ... (9/18)
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Representative Quotes
* ''{Students are} going to need somebody that’s going to understand their situation and they feel that they're being listened to… If you don't have that they're going to feel like they're under pressure from yet another source in their life and so it's going to make their performance even harder. So if they feel that have a safe place to go where they're -- where they feel like they're looked after and respected and people understand them.''
Final Thoughts
It is clear that most participants focused on their own improved competency and emotional state with less focus on the benefits to the university-as a whole and much less to students. This tells us that the current way in which we are discussing resilience is within the academic development frame (e.g., how can this benefit me and my L&T practice?). However, research from Christchurch (e.g., Wright and Wordsworth 2013) indicated that students want to be a part of the solution rather than ‘dictated to’ in times of crisis. Future initiatives will be aimed at engaging student representatives as part of these efforts and hope to rebalance the discussions around student needs, in turn building community preparedness and connections (i.e., perceived support networks; Beaven et al 2011). Also, it is not surprising to see participants’ focus on the benefits before a crisis where resilience can benefit shorter-term (planned or unplanned) disruptions (e.g., going on sabbatical, becoming ill). These ideas can be used to frame the improvement of resilience as being beneficial to academics now, and that working on resilience-building initiatives can reap immediate rewards.
Barriers to resilience
There were 56 barriers identified at the individual-, School-, and institutional-level. At the individual-level, there were two categories of barriers which included an individual’s perceptions and behaviour and their competencies. At the School-level, several categories emerged and included the school culture and community, school management and leadership, logistics and staffing, and less frequently mentioned discipline-based aspects. Lastly, at the institutional-level, the categories that emerged were management and leadership, infrastructure, support and resources, community and communication and students.
Across all levels of the institution, there were nine barriers that were most frequently mentioned:
- Lack of time
- Lack of institutional mandate, buy-in and acknowledgement
- Poor digital literacy: poor awareness, use and uptake of digital technology
- Existing digital systems are limiting, and lack resilience
- Academics unwillingness to change, adapt and be flexible
- Lack of a School-level plan for improving resilience and responding to crises
- Lack of institutional community
- Lack of extrinsic incentives or rewards to encourage resilience initiatives, and
- Academics are unsure of how to become resilient (lack of instructions or template(s)).
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Table 2. A list of 56 barriers which could be potentially detrimental to the uptake of resilience initiatives. Responses and categories are organised by level within the institution and in order of most frequently mentioned (e.g., lack of time (15/18) sits above high staff workload (9/18)). In the right-hand column are the matched incentives (Table 3). Barriers with multiple incentives could be more easily addressed and barriers with fewer should be carefully considered to develop strategies to address them.
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BarriersVertical Divider
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Addressed by these strategies... (Table 3) |
Across All Levels
1. Lack of time (15) |
A6, C1, C5, E1 |
2. Lack of institutional mandate, buy-in, and acknowledgement to improve resilience (15) |
A3, A5, B1, B3–B6, C2–C4, C6, D1, D4, E1 |
3. High staff workload (9) |
A1, A6, C1, C5 |
4. Lack of a resilience-improvement plan that works across all levels of the institution (6) |
A9, B2, B4, D1–D2, D4 |
5. Increasing numbers of students (5) |
-- |
Representative Quotes
Barrier 1: 'The main thing is time. Most people are working over and above their hours anyway and, you know, it's full time just running your course as you've run it for the last 15 years... When {academics} do have spare time, they put it into writing a paper or flossing up a lecture...''
Barrier 1: ''{We are} increasingly in this kind of a rapid cycle where the next deadline is next week, ‘I must do that’. And then next deadline is the week after that, ‘Must do that’. So, we need to have time to reflect and to identify long-term objectives, and then restructure and plan. We basically always fall victim to short-term {thinking}. There's always something on the go.''
Barrier 2: ''I think there would need to be virtually universal uptake by everybody within the school saying ‘Yeah this is a good idea’ … So we must have three or four senior people in various positions, so they’re connected to the university and there's a very strong commitment to try and be on the same page with the university, and it with us… If you don't have a {Vice Chancellor} that’s interested in this, it's not going to go anywhere"
Barrier 3: ''The main thing is time. Most people are working over and above their hours anyway and, you know, it's full time just running your course as you've run it for the last 15 years... When {academics} do have spare time, they put it into writing a paper or flossing up a lecture...''
Barrier 3: '''There's a lot of time pressure, there's a lot of teaching pressure, we're not highly staffed, we have quite high teaching loads. That physical day-to-day grind of doing all the teaching and all the marking, takes away any enthusiasm you may have for building {resilience} skills, building your creative thinking and building your problem solving...''
Barrier 5: ''{We don't do a very good job of really looking after our students. That small group experience is not an expectation, and so, we kind of lose touch. And then all of a sudden if we end up in a situation such as an earthquake, how do we know who these students even are half the time? I mean I'm only dealing with 250, not the thousand that others are dealing with.''
Individual Level
Perceptions & Behaviours (18/18)
6. Unwillingness to change, adapt and be flexible (11) |
-- |
7. Not interested in the improvement of resilience (9) |
A5, B1, B5, B6, C1–C6, D4, E1, E3 |
8. ‘Academic freedom’: preferred lack of interference, ‘ownership’ of courses, and autonomy (8) |
A3, D3, D4 |
9. Overwhelmed by the resilience-building task (7) |
A1, A3–A7, A9, B5, C1, D1, D3, D4, E1 |
10. Distrustful of digital technology (7) |
A1 |
11. Inability to work with others (6) |
-- |
12. Family/personal life prioritised over work responsibilities (6) |
C6, D2, E1 |
13. Limited pedagogical perspectives: limited to face-to-face/on campus, paper-based assessments (5) |
A1, D3, E1 |
14. Research prioritised over teaching (4) |
B1, C1–C3, C6 |
15. Resilience professional development sounds boring (4) |
A3–A5, B5, B6, C1, C2, D4, E1, E3 |
16. Lack of recognition and motivation for L&T changes (3) |
C1–C6, D2, D3 |
17. Crisis-denial: Not wanting to imagine that a crisis will occur in our lifetime (3) |
A4, A5, B5, B6, E3 |
Representative Quotes
Barrier 6: ''The last thing you want is somebody who is inflexible and prone to panic at the slightest change, because that also spreads through the rest of the organisation, and it's not conducive to coming up with practical, even if it's just practical in the short-term, solutions.''
Barrier 8: ''It's actually quite difficult for the School to set a policy on how we will deliver a course, because then everyone will get up in arms about academic freedom. And there's good reasons for academic freedom, but there are certain ways in which the phrase ‘academic freedom’ is used which have got absolutely nothing to do with academic freedom. Because academic freedom does tend to be, ‘I want to do something this way’ - academic freedom. When that's not actually the point of academic freedom ... when in fact academic freedom was developed for other reasons than ‘I don't want to record my lecture’.''
Barrier 11: '''Universities seem to attract a type of person who is absolutely determined to succeed on their own without any help from anybody else. If there's anything that threatens this self-image, it's shunned, and even if it isn't, a person who's succeeded that far and passed that many barriers and gotten this many degrees, and, you know, and beat a hundred other competitors for a tenure tracked job or whatever, they don't know how to ask for help... They don't see themselves as people who need it. And if they admit to themselves they need help, they probably don't know how to get it very effectively.''
Barrier 12: ''You have to be motivated enough to want to get out of your house ... It's not just ‘Here's {points to the table} a disaster’; your disaster's happening at home too. It's everyone around you, so you have to have enough commitment to the institution to want to get out of your own disaster and come and deal with their disaster... That would be the difference between you actually coming in here and doing something, and doing the pastoral care stuff and seeing the students ... compared to sitting at home and talking to a webcam for five minutes and then ‘checking out’ because that's a very different sort of approach.''
Barrier 14: ''So, implicitly for every lecture you give there is some nominal and implied administrative and redevelopment ‘load’ that goes with that... If you give people ‘buy-out’ then the first thing they’re want to going to do is catch up with their research. I mean it's really hard to put people onto that task, because they’re not just teaching staff so they -- so I would think actually some of it would be nice if there was dedicated -- more obvious dedicated support, teaching support.''
Barrier 15: ''Thinking about how am I going to use digital technology to enhance my teaching feels like yet another sort of burden to get on top of. And, you know, it can be quite time consuming, though actually in the end, most of the time, it's not very time consuming at all, but it seems like it in advance, you think ‘Oh my God I've got to go to a 2-hour training session on this new system and I'd rather not do that’.''
Barrier 16: '''I did a massive overhaul of {my course}, the whole learning design, and it was a lot of work. And you get zero credit or recognition for it as far as the university is concerned your course is running... I was less stressed and the students were happier but it doesn't earn you anything.''
Competencies (14/18)
18. Poor digital literacy (12) |
A1, A8, C1, D3 |
19. Not sure how to become more resilient: lack of instructions or template(s) (10) |
A1, A3–A5, A7, A9, B2, B4, B5, C2, D1, D3, D4, E1 |
20. Lack of resilience skills (See Definitions) (4) |
A1, A3–A5, B5, C1, C2, C6, D1, D3, D4, E1 |
Representative Quotes
Barrier 19: ''{I think} having a checklist of ‘Have you thought about this?’, ‘How you would respond to this?’, ‘Have you considered this?’. So that at any point the academic could be questioned... and that response can be different from School to School or course to course. But, at least mandating the fact that they have thought about it and they've got a response.''
Barrier 20: "Thinking about how am I going to use digital technology to enhance my teaching feels like yet another sort of burden to get on top of. And, you know, it can be quite time consuming, though actually in the end, most of the time, it's not very time consuming at all, but it seems like it in advance, you think ‘Oh my God I've got to go to a 2-hour training session on this new system and I'd rather not do that’.''
School Level
Culture & Community (16/18)
21. Lack of shared L&T culture (9) |
D2, D3 |
22. Individualism/lack of collaboration (9) |
B6, D2, D3 |
23. Personality conflicts, lack of positive working relationships and cohesiveness (4) |
B5, D2, D3 |
24. Lack of innovation culture (3) |
A5, B3, C5, C6, D2, D3 |
Representative Quotes
Barrier 21: ''I think an important part comes out of the sharing of resources, the bringing together of what we're doing and saying ‘We're in this together’ in a shared common activity of teaching within our programme, as opposed to me just teaching my course... Of course, it varies from individual to individual and some people kind of wholeheartedly see it as a collaborative activity whereas others will say, ‘Well, I want to teach this course’ and ‘I want to teach it this way’ and ‘I don't really care what you’re telling me, because that's what I think a good academic is.’ I’m doing it like this.’ ... and in fact, what you’re doing is part of a greater collective effort...''
Barrier 22: ''I could be okay to make myself completely resilient and be able to do my job anywhere depending on the situation, but my role is so interdependent on others. In fact, you know, everyone from up to the senior leadership team through to the students. And to be fully resilient then that resilience needs to be spread across to our collaborators we work with as well... You have co-teaching across programmes and courses, and if one person changes their teaching to be a resilient style of teaching, the next week the students might be in the case where they're in the opposite situation... But it's only some of the people's priority, not everyone.''
Management & Leadership (15/18)
25. Lack of School-level plan (11) |
A4, A5, A7, B2, B3, C2, D1 |
26. Poor School leadership: delegation, coordination, organisation (7) |
B2, B3, D2, D4 |
27. Disagreements on curriculum (4) |
A3, A7, B2, B3, D4 |
28. Resilience not prioritised within School (3) |
B1–B3, C2–C4, C6, D1 |
29. Lack of School L&T policy on everyday course responsibilities and requirements (3) |
D3 |
Representative Quotes
Barrier 25: ''I think it's really just the lack of a plan... Honestly, if it all happened tomorrow I don't think that -- I don't feel that confident. I mean I wouldn't know what to do at this point, and like I've got 800 people in my class.''
Logistics & Staffing (11/18)
30. Inter-dependency of staff (5) |
-- |
31. Lack of L&T tools, equipment, lecture materials (5) |
A2, A8, C4, D3 |
32. Uneven workload (4) |
C5 |
33. Inter-dependency of courses (3) |
-- |
34. Lack of staff cover for teaching (3) |
A6, B2, C4 |
Representative Quotes
Barrier 30: ''I think one thing I thought about with this is just the sheer number of staff and the students in the ‘chain’. We've got a very much -- I was going to say rotating door policy, but our teaching assistants, for example, they have an awful lot of responsibility for the teaching. I don't think we've thought about, for those people, what would it mean in an emergency? Because we sort of have this idea, you know, there'll be the academic, and the course coordinator will be able to sit down and rethink about some way of doing these things, but actually, those teaching assistants are the ones who actually run everything, in terms of the lab teaching... It means that the skills that the teaching assistants, tutors, coordinators, and other people involved in that course have, are completely different from {the lecturers}, and the way that's run is really different, so it could be very hard for someone to pick up some of those courses and be able to actually implement them.''
Barrier 30: ''I could be okay to make myself completely resilient and be able to do my job anywhere depending on the situation, but my role is so interdependent on others. In fact, you know, everyone from up to the senior leadership team through to the students. And to be fully resilient then that resilience needs to be spread across to our collaborators we work with as well... You have co-teaching across programmes and courses, and if one person changes their teaching to be a resilient style of teaching, the next week the students might be in the case where they're in the opposite situation... But it's only some of the people's priority, not everyone.''
Barrier 35 and 36: ''I think one thing I thought about with this is just the sheer number of staff and the students in the ‘chain’. We've got a very much -- I was going to say rotating door policy, but our teaching assistants, for example, they have an awful lot of responsibility for the teaching. I don't think we've thought about, for those people, what would it mean in an emergency? Because we sort of have this idea, you know, there'll be the academic, and the course coordinator will be able to sit down and rethink about some way of doing these things, but actually, those teaching assistants are the ones who actually run everything, in terms of the lab teaching... It means that the skills that the teaching assistants, tutors, coordinators, and other people involved in that course have, are completely different from {the lecturers}, and the way that's run is really different, so it could be very hard for someone to pick up some of those courses and be able to actually implement them.''
Discipline-based (7/18)
37. Different disciplinary approaches to resilience; it’s not ‘one-size-fits-all’ (5) |
A1, A3–A5, B2, D3 |
38. Variation in L&T spaces, places, and times (4) |
A5, B5, C1, D3 |
Representative Quotes
Barrier 37: ''Depending on the school that you're in, all your colleagues could be teaching in the same way… There's a whole range of teaching within the Schools which means that you don't necessarily know what teaching methods are appropriate or inappropriate for your colleagues. And there needs to be recognition that there's not a one-size-fits-all approach.''
Institutional Level
Management & Leadership (16/18)
39. Poor institutional leadership (6) |
B1, B2, B6, D1 |
40. Lack of longevity in resilience vision and efforts (6) |
A4, B2–B5, C2, D1, D4, E1, E2 |
41. Resilience as a standalone initiative; not embedded (5) |
A4, B2, B4, C2, E1, E2 |
42. Bureaucracy (3) |
A4 |
Representative Quotes
Barrier 39: ''You need to have informed, persuasive leadership that identifies preparedness as a very important goal and then enlists academic staff and support staff in the task of figuring out the best ways to be resilient and then getting on with it... The chief barrier is if you don't have enlightened, persuasive leadership, if you don't have that at a department or school level, if you don't have it at the higher university level then it's not going to go anywhere because it's not a priority''
Infrastructure (14/18)
43. Limited digital systems, structures and processes (e.g., educational capture, IP, licensing) (12) |
A1, A4, A8, A9, B6, C1 |
44. Limited physical systems, structures and processes (9) |
A2, A4, B6 |
45. Face-to-face/campus-based culture, but campus is vulnerable (5) |
A2, B2, B5, B6 |
Representative Quotes
Barrier 43: ''I’ve realised that all my stuff’s online, but if the quake hits and the infrastructure goes down, all my videos are who knows where and everyone is going to be wanting to access them. We need a way to somehow automate {this process} so that all of those lectures got automatically downloaded and put on a hard drive… every single academic’s going to want to get access to {their videos} but {our technology staff} doesn't have the capacity yet to help everyone.''
Barrier 45: ''There's a high expectation that staff-to-staff and staff-to student interaction takes place in a physical space during office hours on campus. And so, we have that kind of pressure to use the physical space as our core -- and there's a culture of it, as a core -- as an individual as how we work at {our institution}.''
Support & Resources (12/18)
46. Lack of rewards and extrinsic incentives (10) |
B1, B6, C1–C5, E3 |
47. Lack of staff expertise, resources and training in resilience (8) |
A1, A2, A5–A7, A9, B1, B6, C1, C4, C5, D3, D4, E1 |
48. Lack of funding and material resources to support resilience (6) |
A2, A8, B1, B6, C1, C4 |
Representative Quotes
Barrier 46: ''I think one of the barriers is not having extrinsic motivation to make {resilience} higher up the list. Like there's no reward for developing the skills that make you resilient. There's no incentives other than you should probably do it.''
Barrier 47: ''So, implicitly for every lecture you give there is some nominal and implied administrative and redevelopment ‘load’ that goes with that... If you give people ‘buy-out’ then the first thing they’re want to going to do is catch up with their research. I mean it's really hard to put people onto that task, because they’re not just teaching staff so they -- so I would think actually some of it would be nice if there was dedicated -- more obvious dedicated support, teaching support.''
Community & Communication (12/18)
49. Lack of cohesive and nurturing institutional community (10) |
A4, B3, B5, D1–D4 |
50. Ineffective institutional-level communication to all staff and students (7) |
A3, A9, B1–B5, D1, D2 |
51. Ineffective cooperation and communication between students and staff (5) |
A4, A9, B5, D2 |
Representative Quotes
Barrier 49 and 50: ''It's just so easy for people to get lost in this place. And if we had a better sense of community then when something like this happens... You know, making sure that {students aren’t} lost. The problem is that we do everything course by course. We all do our own bit with our students. There's not a lot of sort of degree-level community building or even programme-level, it's all you know ‘These are my students. I will do this.’ And then somebody else is doing the same thing trying to keep in touch with them. So there needs to be a better framework, I suppose, for the way that students are incorporated into community.''
Barrier 49 and 50: ''I feel like there is a huge lack of a collective community, a sense of cohesion in the University, as a whole. I feel like a sense of community in a crisis situation would be essential. So, we would need, not only clear communication from upper administration, but they need to begin fostering a sense of community so that we are actually open to receiving their communication.''
Barrier 51: ''I think we are generally very bad at communication with our students... it says that the academic will be responsible for communicating with all of their students, fine. But how are we saying they're going to do that? What have we put in place such that that's possible or easy? Or do we just expect the academics to have thought about that themselves?... That would vary from course to course which is hard on the students ... We've talked about you know, email blurts or Facebook pages, but I don't know that there's necessarily any one channel because different students will engage with different tools. But, whether we need to create a one channel that everybody is aware of, or designate two or three to say these are the options you've got... Whatever the tools selected are, it's just someone needs to make that decision to say these are our channels. ‘This is our approach’''
Students (11/18)
52. Lack of pastoral care model for students (8) |
B5, D2, D3 |
53. Students are not digitally literate (5) |
A1, A8 |
54. Students have diverse needs and require a range of supports (4) |
A4–A6, B2, B4 |
55. Students are expected to be effective learners without training or resources (4) |
A2 |
56. Resilience must be considered and nurtured in students, too (3 |
Incentives for improved resilience
There were 28 incentives and strategies mentioned by participants that can be used to reduce barriers and motivate academics and universities to improve their resilience to disruption. Five categories were identified which include: resources and support, acknowledgement from senior leadership, extrinsic motivators (i.e., rewards, financial compensation), community-building, and embedding resilience in everyday procedures. The top three specific incentives which were the most commonly mentioned includes:
- Providing one-on-one staff support to develop resilience skills, and initiatives
- Providing buy-out for academics to explicitly focus on these initiatives, and
- Getting endorsement and acknowledgement from senior leadership by supporting resilience at all levels
|
Table 3. A list of incentives which can be used to reduce barriers and motivate academics and universities to improve their resilience to disruption. Responses and categories (A-E) are shown in order of most frequently mentioned. In the middle column are the matched barriers (done by the authors, not the participants). Incentives which address multiple barriers should be considered of higher priority by academic developers.
|
A: Resources & Support (18)
No. of Barriers |
||
A1. |
Provide one-on-one staff support to test resilience initiatives, new products and procedures, and build digital literacy (11) |
11 |
A2. |
Provide resources (i.e., material & financial) to support resilience initiatives (6) |
6 |
A3. |
Make the resilience-building process accessible, transparent and explicit (6) |
9 |
A4. |
Practice crisis scenarios (5) |
16 |
A5. |
Share successful resilience case studies and ‘champions’ from our institution and other disaster experiences (5) |
13 |
A6. |
Get tutors and graduate students to run resilience projects and share the workload (4) |
6 |
A7. |
Provide a resilience-building ‘template’ for staff to follow (1) |
6 |
A8. |
Increase the institution’s digital resources (1) |
5 |
A9. |
Provide resilience information on the internal institutional website (1) |
7 |
Representative Quotes
A1 and A2: ''Acknowledging that workload issue, to say, okay, so if this is our plan, how are we going to progress? Does that mean this course needs a lot of work and therefore we're going to apply a tutor, a teaching aid, whatever you want to call it? {And} resources and support, to not necessarily do the work for the academics, but support in achieving {their goals}… Because sometimes it does take more than one person, but acknowledging what that extra resource might need to be.''
A3: ''I think alignment is the key, you know, like aligning these innovation grants {with resilience}, aligning them, embedding it … for {academics} to see the three or four different ways in which we can embed it in the culture… have it {be} very explicit that they care about it and that they stay on message''
B: Acknowledgement from Senior Leadership (13)
No. of Barriers |
||
B1. |
University leaders endorse and demonstrate support for resilience (9) |
9 |
B2. |
Have a School-level resilience plan (5) |
12 |
B3. |
Get buy-in from the Head of School (3) |
11 |
B4. |
Have an institutional-level resilience plan (3) |
6 |
B5. |
Have an annual ‘resilience to disruption’ day at the University (3) |
14 |
B6. |
Emphasize the major losses that the University would incur (1) |
13 |
Representative Quotes
B1: ''There needs to be a recognition that there’s actually time and money being spent {on resilience}. That it's not all falling on us. And that there's a perception, often times, by academic staff as ‘Oh my God, another thing that's dumped on us that we've got to do for which there’s very little pay off and that will cost me one publication a year and that means I'm not going to get promoted.’ This is a raw deal. So there needs to be some creative and persuasive way of pitching this so that it's seen as necessary and a good thing and that it doesn't cost us individually a lot.''
B2: ''All three {levels, i.e., individual, departmental and institutionally} need a very strong plan that's backed by senior leaders ‑‑ well, institutional and department need backing from senior leadership team… and not just having the plan, but successfully communicating about the plan''
C: Extrinsic Motivators (11)
No. of Barriers |
||
C1. |
Buy-out: Time explicitly set aside to focus on resilience initiatives (11) |
15 |
C2. |
Acknowledge the importance of resilience explicitly in hiring, promotions, performance review and KPI’s (10) |
12 |
C3. |
Acknowledgement and recognition of excellence in resilience through awards and cash bonuses (6) |
6 |
C4. |
Provide funding for staff to take up resilience initiatives (3) |
10 |
C5. |
Reduce current teaching loads (1) |
8 |
C6. |
Encourage resilience-building as a research opportunity (1) |
8 |
Representative Quotes
C1: ''We have research and study leave for academics where they can take six months out, buy-out of all of their teaching and go and focus on their research. Why don't we do that for teaching? Let's have ‘teaching enhancement leave’. Give them six months out of teaching so that they can focus on two or three courses, and completely redesign them, start from scratch, think about their teaching process et cetera, et cetera … I mean, there's always going to be some staff that are passionate about teaching and will find time. But for the vast majority, because that acknowledgment of its importance isn't there, whether they believe it or not, the University doesn't demonstrate it, their teaching will always be ‘turn up and deliver.''
C2: ''Honestly at the individual level, the biggest carrot is the promotions criteria... If you really want people to take it seriously en masse, then you've got to start tying it in with the one thing that most of them care about, which is promotions... I think promotions is a way of actually addressing it among some of the junior staff. And if you begin to affect their mode of thinking they'll carry that through to their later career as well.''
D: Community Building (8)
No. of Barriers |
||
D1. |
Communicate about resilience within the institution and the wider academic community (4) |
11 |
D2. |
Cultivate a stronger sense of community within and across the Schools (4) |
11 |
D3. |
Share T&L practice within Schools to encourage capacity building (3) |
17 |
D4. |
‘Grass roots’: Empower academics to be a part of the resilience building process (1) |
13 |
Representative Quotes
D1: ''Coming back to that idea of cultivating a sense of University‑wide community. Like if we received a video email from the Chancellor of the University… saying ‘Hey, you know you guys are all really important. the University is going to be holding these workshops so that you can learn how to use this type of technology to teach your classes in the case of a crisis, because we really want to make sure everyone is on board.’... It doesn't take much, you know, but it shows that they're putting some effort in and they're reaching out to us, and they're telling us that we matter in this equation.''
E: Incorporate and acknowledge resilience in day-to-day procedures (6)
No. of Barriers |
||
E1. |
Emphasize and embed resilience within institutional T&L, course re-development and everyday teaching (5) |
12 |
E2. |
Embed resilience within health and safety procedures and emergency protocols (2) |
2 |
E3. |
Emphasize the benefits of resilience in other types of absences (e.g., sabbatical) (2) |
4 |
Representative Quotes
E1: "Everyone revises or revamps or refreshes their courses so to -- and that's something that I think people are comfortable with and accept as part of their job. And to encourage them to do the resilience thing at the same time, so it's just part of a process that’s happening anyway.''
E1: ''It's about embedding it, and the ability to cope with other events like sickness or sabbatical or whatever and show how these things can be really helpful. And I think you're probably going to get most traction out of linking our resilience to teaching and learning innovation … Because that's going to naturally lead to doing things in different ways and flexible learning. And flexible learning is what is going to be the key to this, to a resilient teaching environment.''
Most of the incentives matched with more than 10 barriers. These ‘high-impact’ incentives would be a great place to start, for universities aiming to make a marked improvement to institutional resilience. Just like the barriers, many of the incentives have been shown to help encourage flexible learning strategies. The highest impact incentives included:
- sharing L&T practice within Schools to encourage capacity building,
- practicing crisis scenarios, and
- buy-out
Resources
- Dohaney and Archie 2016: Quickfire self-audit of resilience
- Dohaney 2016: Five steps to improved resilience
- Dohaney 2016: Critical vulnerabilities checklist (word document)
- Archie 2015: Course resiliency assessment (word document)
- Archie 2015: Course resiliency plan (word document)
- Archie 2015: Academic Resiliency in the Faculties of Science, Engineering, Architecture and Design - Final Report
- Archie 2015: Academic Resiliency in the Faculties of Science, Engineering, Architecture and Design - Executive Summary
- Flutey 2016: Resilience to Disruption: Technology, capability and pedagogy
Experiences from Canterbury
Social impact:
- Potter et al 2015: An overview of the impacts of the 2010-2011 Canterbury earthquakes
- Seville et al. 2011: Shaken but not Stirred: A University's Resilience in the Face of Adversity. The 4th September 2010 Earthquake
- Healey 2011: The 2010 and 2011 Canterbury earthquakes and organisational learning at the University of Canterbury: Does practice make perfect?
- Beaven et al. 2014: Risk and Resilience Factors Reported by a New Zealand Tertiary Student Population After the 4th September 2010 Darfield Earthquake
- Kemp et al. 2011: Sleeplessness, stress, cognitive disruption and academic performance following the september 4, 2010, christchurch earthquake
- Wright and Wordsworth 2013: Teaching Through 10,000 Earthquakes: Constructive Practice for Instructors in a Post-Disaster Environment
- Dabner 2012: ‘Breaking Ground’ in the use of social media: A case study of a university earthquake response to inform educational design with Facebook
- Mackey et al: Riding the seismic waves: re-blending teacher education in response to changing demands The Canterbury earthquakes
- Liggett, Pedley and Brogt 2015: Curriculum restructuring overnight: Teaching large first-year classes after a major earthquake
- Wilkinson et al 2013: The impact of learning environment disruption on medical student performance
- Seaton et al 2012: Preparedness for Sudden Change: Lessons from managing large-scale disruption within a Bachelor of Nursing community - Summary Report
Academic Resilience Steering Committee
For further information on specific case studies and experiences in resilience, please contact one of the steering committee (in no particular order):
- Jacqueline Dohaney (Academic resilience coordinator, Science in Society),
- Mairead de Roiste (SGEES),
- Rhian Salmon (Science in Society),
- Richard Arnold (SMS),
- Marc Wilson (Psychology),
- Jonathan Flutey (ITS, Learning and Research Technology Team Manager),
- Sarah Hoyte (ITS, Learning and Research Technology Specialist),
- Suzanne Boniface (SCPS),
- Stuart Marshall (Engineering and Computer Sciences),
- Stuart Brock (FHSS),
- Paul Jose (Psychology),
- Peter Ritchie (Biological Sciences),
- Irina Elgort (CAD),
- Craigie Sinclair (Student Services, Information and Record Management)
