Asynchronous online learning: facilitating management compliance in a UK university

Andy Eagle-Weston

Keywords Management Development; TEL; Management Toolkits; management behaviours; management processes

This scholarship project is being conducted to support the work of the Organisational Development (OD) team within the Human Resources department of a UK based Higher Education Institution. The OD team have responsibility for the development of leaders and people managers within the organisation, to ensure both what they do and how they do it is aligned to the processes, policies and behavioural frameworks adopted by the organisation.

Asynchronous online ‘Management Toolkits’ have been designed to use purposeful online activity, that can be completed asynchronously and at the point of need and cover both process and behavioural expectations for people managers within the organisation. One toolkit has been created so far and there is now an understanding of the resource requirements to create it. As an organisation there is a desire to understand how managers are interacting with the content and activities within the toolkits and whether the interactions are impacting the behavioural and compliance requirements that are intended.

The study aims to ascertain the success of online learning toolkits, in supporting people managers to follow processes as advised by the organsiation, in a way that is congruent with the organisation’s behavioural framework. The intent is to understand how the learning design can be used to facilitate completion of the learning, and how the learning design supports the intended outcomes.

The project collected primary data through an electronic survey directly from learners who had completed the introduction to Line Management course. The data collected was quantitative, with some free text questions. The questions were designed to gauge the reaction to the learning design and perceived importance to different components of the learning design from the learners, along with a self-assessment of confidence, knowledge of processes and application of learning post course, identifying the impact of the learning design on the behaviour and compliance of the manager.

All 128 people managers who had attended the introduction to management course in the past 12 months were invited to participate, with 31 people managers responding to the survey, giving a response rate of 24.2%. Of the respondents, 39% had used a Manager Toolkit and of those, 76% had rated the toolkit positively.

90% of respondents believed the design of online learning material to be important in motivating completion and engagement with the content with the most important features being reported as the user-friendly design of the platform itself, along with the use of real-world scenarios to cover the content and the visual appeal of the content. Less important to respondents were interactive elements, personalised content or feedback on progress.

64% of respondents reported that online learning had increased their knowledge of people processes, with 89% providing a favourable response to being confident in completing people related processes. A total of 43% of respondents reported that online learning had increased their knowledge of behavioural expectations, with 90% responding favourably to a self-assessment question on knowing the behaviours expected of them as managers.

Findings will discuss the results of the project and the success at answering the following assumptions:

• That online learning through asynchronous management toolkits facilitate people managers to become more competent at managing people processes, aligned to the organisation’s behavioural framework.
• That learning design can be used to motivate people managers to interact with learning content online.
• That the learning design of online asynchronous content encourage process and behavioural compliance in people managers.

The conclusion will also examine any other impacting factors along with recommendations for the future of management toolkits and or future research.