Representing Campus-Wide Information Systems and Multicultural Education and Technology Journal at AARE

"That until the color of a man's skin is of no more significance than the color of his eyes ..." - Haile Selassie

I will be representing Campus-Wide Information Systems at the Australian Association for Research in Education conference in Fremantle in November and hunting for quality papers for the journal and its sister the Multicultural Education and Technology Journal.

I will present a paper called "Accomodating Culture within ICT-driven change programmes in Higher Education" I argue that Higher Education (HE) is key to creating and supporting the envisioned knowledge-based economies of the 21st century. Ironically, however, while the sector specialises in creating and imparting knowledge, it is often less agile than its industrial counterparts in applying knowledge media and ICT in response to threats and opportunities within its ecosystem. A complicating factor is that HE has a unique set of cultures. These include the chasm between academic and general staff. Moreover, collegiate traditions and ideals are now in competition with new financial realities and personal reward structures, which is generating a high level of resistance to change. Such cultural issues make it imperative to plan change carefully but hard to learn from change narratives set in other sectors. So, while there is a clear need within HE for ICT-driven change and change management, traditional approaches to embedding ICT must accommodate academic culture. The presentation will appeal to academic and general staff who are interested in embedding ICT within HE's unique culture.

The presentation incorporates ideas I have developed with Tom Browne of Exeter University and which we published in our special issues of the Journal of Organizational Transformation and Social Change.